Support NeoGAF

[coldfoot]

Great to see Halo finally getting the graphics it deserves...shame that it's on the only console that charges to play online. Just because of the XBL policy, I won't enter the MS ecosystem at all, including Windows 8 and WP8. If they dropped that, I'd be more willing to give MS ecosystem another look.

Nevertheless, I think people are easily impressed by shiny Sci-fi art style than cartoon art style like Uncharted, hence some of the hyperbole here. Both are great looking games, UC has the advantage in poly count, textures, and motion blur, while Halo has larger levels. Since I'm even ok with Tokyo Jungle graphics, Halo 4 graphics would be more than sufficient for my enjoyment.

 

[higherARC05]

They're much much bigger. Ignoring the skyboxes, there's a lot more play area.

The interiors of 4 definitely look better than the interiors of Reach (when the pop-in isn't noticeable), but that's because Halo 4's levels are divided into sections. They're separated by portals or doors that close shut behind you. They have more leeway with it because they've made them more linear.

HALO 4 is as linear as the past HALOs.

I remember in all HALOs going in one direction with wide open areas. That is how HALO 4 is.

Can you explain the first mission in HALO 3 por favor? Or most of the levels for that matter? How is it so "open" and not linear?

Also there is BARELY any pop in bro. You talking out your hole. In the second level when you get into the open green lands, I looked at the cliffs to see if the geometry changes like any other game to a less poly model. But throughout the whole map, no matter how far, the cliffs retain their geometry with no swaps. I have a 50in HDTV and I will notice any model swaps but HALO 4 pushes so much polys with barely no lod issues.

Just watch this vid and watch NO lod pop in at all.
http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_halo_4_gunfights-29063_en.html

 

[Kazuma Kiryu]

these two games really show the best of both platforms.
IQ is almost perfect, god damn.

 

[TUROK]

HALO 4 is as linear as the past HALOs.

I remember in all HALOs going in one direction with wide open areas. That is how HALO 4 is.

Can you explain the first mission in HALO 3 por favor? Or most of the levels for that matter? How is it so "open" and not linear?

Halo 3, ODST, and Reach didn't have levels divided into sections that prevent you from backtracking.

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

Halo 3, ODST, and Reach didn't have levels divided into sections that prevent you from backtracking.

Exactly right. Tsavo Highway was huge and open. The Ark was especially open wide.

You also had fifty or so enemies on screen at once - each of them getting into their own fire-fights, piloting Choppers and Ghosts and tanks and everything else while Scarabs were stomping around. Just an absolutely ridiculous amount of stuff going on.

The battles in HALO 4 aren't half the size as that of HALO 3 and the gameplay isn't nearly as diverse.

 

[higherARC05]

Halo 3, ODST, and Reach didn't have levels divided into sections that prevent you from backtracking.

lol backtracking is not a feature of being non linear. You still are in a fine tuned path. To progress you gotta go in that one direction mate.

 

[higherARC05]

Exactly right. Tsavo Highway was huge and open. The Ark was especially open wide.

You also had fifty or so enemies on screen at once - each of them getting into their own fire-fights, piloting Choppers and Ghosts and tanks and everything else while Scarabs were stomping around. Just an absolutely ridiculous amount of stuff going on.

The battles in HALO 4 aren't half the size as that of HALO 3 and the gameplay isn't nearly as diverse.

HALO 3 had at most around 20 enemies on screen. Reach improved with around 40+.

HALO 4 in the first episode there are the same as Reach.

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

lol backtracking is not a feature of being non linear. You still are in a fine tuned path. To progress you gotta go in that one direction mate.

Except in HALO 3 you didn't have to. The Ark was a good example of this. As soon as you got your vehicles, you could break off right or left and go to different huge encounters.

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

HALO 3 had at most around 20 enemies on screen. Reach improved with around 40+.

This is a load of shit. As somebody who spent WAY too much time in HALO 3's theatre mode, I've counted 48+ enemies on screen all at the same time. Reach never surpassed that.

 

[delta25]

I like Halo

 

[Y2Kev]

4 looks better than Reach because of the lack of the temporal AA garbage alone.

Agreed, but I do think Turok has a point after playing the first two levels. It's much more segmented. Which I don't think bugs me.

 

[TUROK]

HALO 3 had at most around 20 enemies on screen. Reach improved with around 40+.

HALO 4 in the first episode there are the same as Reach.

Nope, enemy count hits the 40's at times, especially with the flood.

lol backtracking is not a feature of being non linear. You still are in a fine tuned path. To progress you gotta go in that one direction mate.

But it is a feature of open, non-restrictive level design.

Also, if you think the particles haven't been downgraded, pay close attention to Phantom explosions and Wraith cannon shots. They are weaksauce.

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

Went hunting to see if I could find some of my old H3 theatre snaps.

I used to have a bad habit for wanting to keep as many marines alive as I could. This was one such encounter: the marines I kept alive during the Brute encounter on Tsavo Highway. That is fourteen marines alive with me. There are many, many brutes and grunts and tanks in the Brute encounter on Tsavo Highway (on Legendary, one dropship drops off 15 high-ranking Brutes alone). So there goes the '20 enemies at most' theory already.




As for being locked in by the skyboxes in HALO 3 - I beg to differ! :lol:



HALO 3 really was a gorgeous game. The HDR lighting was absolutely gorgeous, the water beautiful and the texture work was outstanding - especially when you went inside some explosions and it really highlighted the work that went into the models.

 

[higherARC05]

Nope, enemy count hits the 40's at times, especially with the flood.

But it is a feature of open, non-restrictive level design.

Also, if you think the particles haven't been downgraded, pay close attention to Phantom explosions and Wraith cannon shots. They are weaksauce.

Particles are the same. They added them to areas that was not present in Reach. They focused on the Prometheans and their weapons ablility to disenegrate any character. Also levels themselves exibit way more sparks than in Reach levels. It's the result of more detailed levels.

 

[watership]

Well, I thought Halo 4 looked good.. But you guys. .you convinced me i was wrong. Whew, thanks for that.

 

[shinnn]

more gifs

Facial animations and mocap are stunning.

 

[higherARC05]

 

[Trickster]

Beautiful gifs

Moar!

more please.

 

[Sanic]

Well, I thought Halo 4 looked good.. But you guys. .you convinced me i was wrong. Whew, thanks for that.

Heh, honestly, i've come to appreciate Reach more after reading through this thread.

I think 4 has superior art direction to Reach, but after reading around and checking things for myself, there really were more tradeoffs as opposed to it being a straight improvement like I initially though.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

I know everyone is raving about Halo 4's graphics, but it's not doing anything for me to be honest. It's the first console game I've played in over a year and the lack of decent AA and lower resolution is ruining the iq, it just looks blurry and jagged...

 

[BruiserBear]

Just finished the campaign.

This game does a lot of things very well, but nothing that is truly exceptional. The lighting is quite impressive, as are the facial animations, but at times the lip syncing seemed very off, which was unfortunate.

The body movements of some characters also looked a little off, in the few cutscenes where you could see it.

 

[sp3000]

Particles are the same. They added them to areas that was not present in Reach. They focused on the Prometheans and their weapons ablility to disenegrate any character. Also levels themselves exibit way more sparks than in Reach levels. It's the result of more detailed levels.

The wraith cannon and the phantom explosions look awful compared to Reach

 

[Trickster]

I know everyone is raving about Halo 4's graphics, but it's not doing anything for me to be honest. It's the first console game I've played in over a year and the lack of decent AA and lower resolution is ruining the iq, it just looks blurry and jagged...

It's the first console game I've played since dark souls. And I was still blown away by how good it looked, granted I notice jaggies and lack of AF. But it still looks prettier to me than pretty much any pc game I've played. And yes, i do play at 1200p, always with 16AF and some AA.

Not saying you're wrong, just that I feel differently even though I've also mainly played pc for a while

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

The wraith cannon and the phantom explosions look awful compared to Reach

Explosions look awful full stop. Not only do grenades do jack shit. They have no oomph whatsoever. They're like firecrackers.

 

[abadguy]

People can go on and on about so called "trade offs" all they want, the result is one of the best looking games this gen. Its funny so many give props to H3 and Reach now all of a sudden they're being held as such grand technical marvels. When they launched they were getting shit on left and right graphics and gameplay wise(H3 especially) now they supposedly look better than 4? Give me a break.

 

[Trickster]

People can go on and on about so called "trade offs" all they want, the result is one of the best looking games this gen. Its funny so many give props to H3 and Reach now all of a sudden they're being held as such grand technical marvels. When they launched they were getting shit on left and right graphics and gameplay wise(H3 especially) now they supposedly look better than 4? Give me a break.

I agree that it's funny to see people give Halo 4 such a hard to time for cutting back on some of the things from previous halo games, when the result is flat out on of the best looking games ever.

That said, I really hope/expect Halo 5 to bring back some of the things that bungie halo games did better, the textures in their games are much much better up close. And their games also had levels that were more open and had more enemies at the same time.

 

[Uno Venova]

People can go on and on about so called "trade offs" all they want, the result is one of the best looking games this gen. Its funny so many give props to H3 and Reach now all of a sudden they're being held as such grand technical marvels. When they launched they were getting shit on left and right graphics and gameplay wise(H3 especially) now they supposedly look better than 4? Give me a break.

Have you seen the same people shitting on it back then changing their tune now?

 

[Reiko]

these two games really show the best of both platforms.
IQ is almost perfect, god damn.

Good comparison. I agree.

 

[Hypron]

these two games really show the best of both platforms.
IQ is almost perfect, god damn.

I would respectfully disagree: GoW 3's IQ is way, way better than Halo 4's. God of War 3 is one of the cleanest games on consoles (along with Forza Horizon), but Halo is nowhere near having perfect IQ. FXAA does only so much, there are lots of jaggies left, it's simply not playing in the same category. The game has a lot of merit in other areas, such as lightning, animations or the sheer scale of the environments, but IQ is definitely not one of them. Its IQ is decent (better than Gears 3 for example), but not almost perfect by any mean.

 

[watership]

Explosions look awful full stop. Not only do grenades do jack shit. They have no oomph whatsoever. They're like firecrackers.

This I agree with.

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

Have you seen the same people shitting on it back then changing their tune now?

This.

Plus I haven't seen people saying that HALO 3 or Reach look better than 4, just that whilst 4 looks better, the trade-offs may not have been worth it. And then people have posted evidence and arguments for trade-offs.

 

[Reiko]

I would respectfully disagree: GoW 3's IQ is way, way better than Halo 4's. God of War 3 is one of the cleanest games on consoles (along with Forza Horizon), but Halo is nowhere near having perfect IQ. FXAA does only so much, there are lots of jaggies left, it's simply not playing in the same category. The game has a lot of merit in other areas, such as lightning, animations or the sheer scale of the environments, but IQ is definitely not one of them. Its IQ is decent (better than Gears 3 for example), but not almost perfect by any mean.

Alan Wake American Nightmare is another one with 4xMSAA & FXAA.

I know everyone is raving about Halo 4's graphics, but it's not doing anything for me to be honest. It's the first console game I've played in over a year and the lack of decent AA and lower resolution is ruining the iq, it just looks blurry and jagged...

The game is 720p native like the best looking console exclusives and it uses FXAA... PC gamer?

 

[Hypron]

Alan Wake American Nightmare is another one with 4xMSAA & FXAA.

True, but then it is rendered in sub HD so it comes off a bit blurrier than native 720p games. But at least it has got very few jaggies.

 

[adamsapple]

This gif has a lot of potential on GAF.

 

[BassForever]

Non-FPS Halo I want:

Halo Wars 2
X-Com style Halo.

Oh god yes!

 

[Reiko]

True, but then it is rendered in sub HD so it comes off a bit blurrier than native 720p games. But at least it has got very few jaggies.

The difference is probably due to the FXAA being more selective compared to Forza Horizon.

 

[likedamaster]

The best looking face models I've ever seen. Incredible. They nailed it, completely, with no uncanny valley in sight.

 

[bangai-o]

No, you're right. I shit on them when they were still in charge. Mostly for not caring enough about a steady framerate. The upside of this is that 343 proved they could make great Halo games, which now means we as gamers will have Halo titles still plus whatever Bungie moves on to.

and there will still be gamers too crap all over this new Halo and further Halos by 343. One of the most likely reasoning being turning the game into CoD, and not following Halo 2 fundamentals.

 

[SCULLIBUNDO]

The best looking face models I've ever seen. Incredible. They nailed it, completely, with no uncanny valley in sight.

Thank you, based Cameron.

 

[Izayoi]

I was very surprised at how good the game looked.

There are a few issues every now and then, but for the most part it's probably the most technically impressive game in the series. The framerate is far more solid than Reach (I do see occasional drops, especially in Big Team on Exile), the lighting, despite the fact that a lot of it is trickery, looks exceptional. The biggest thing for me is the image quality, which is by the best of any game in the Halo series (barring the PC ports). I'm not a huge fan of FXAA, but it works great in this particular case. Definitely better than the temporal shit that Reach used, and the complete lack of AA in 3.

I will take some direct feed screenshots later, I'm curious to see how they turn out.

 

[Trickster]

Oh god yes!

X-com style halo game would be pretty awesome, just need to improve some of the aspects that weren't so good in x-com

Thank you, based Cameron.

Pretty much, that facial capturing tech is sogood.gif

 

[Elginer]

Stunning looking game. Like I've said with the advancements in facial mocap and lighting with Reach's textures, a next-gen Halo is going to look fucking insanely beautiful. Imagine with DX11 effects, full dynamic water and 1080p.

Sogood.gif

 

[Reiko]

Stunning looking game. Like I've said with the advancements in facial mocap and lighting with Reach's textures, a next-gen Halo is going to look fucking insanely beautiful. Imagine with DX11 effects, full dynamic water and 1080p.

Sogood.gif

Yep. Corrine Yu helped put together some of the major components in DX11...

This is nothing compared to what they have in store. But I can say that for other devs going into next gen.

 

[NBtoaster]

The best looking face models I've ever seen. Incredible. They nailed it, completely, with no uncanny valley in sight.

Some of the lip synching is a little off though.

 

[soldat7]

The wraith cannon and the phantom explosions look awful compared to Reach

Which in turn look awful compared to the same in Halo 3.

 

[higherARC05]

I agree that it's funny to see people give Halo 4 such a hard to time for cutting back on some of the things from previous halo games, when the result is flat out on of the best looking games ever.

That said, I really hope/expect Halo 5 to bring back some of the things that bungie halo games did better, the textures in their games are much much better up close. And their games also had levels that were more open and had more enemies at the same time.

HALO 4 has many high frequency mapping which is what you see in the past HALO games for the super detailed textures.

Do me a favor and right when you land on Requim. Look at the ground, rocks, cliffs, etc the textures are SUPER high res and detailed with shaders.

Also the grenades in HALO 4 have higher texture detail than in the past HALO games.

I just seen the plasma gernade up close and that thing in HALO 4 is freaking rediculuously detailed compared to Reach and 3.

 

[Reiko]

HALO 4 has many high frequency mapping which is what you see in the past HALO games for the super detailed textures.

Do me a favor and right when you land on Requim. Look at the ground, rocks, cliffs, etc the textures are SUPER high res and detailed with shaders.

Also the grenades in HALO 4 have higher texture detail than in the past HALO games.

I just seen the plasma gernade up close and that thing in HALO 4 is freaking rediculuously detailed compared to Reach and 3.

Get with the program. Halo is not supposed to look good.

 

[soldat7]

Halo 4's graphics came at a price, one that makes it less impressive than Reach, in my opinion.

Depends on the level, but I'm not going to outright disagree.

 

[Sutton Dagger]

The game is 720p native like the best looking console exclusives and it uses FXAA... PC gamer?

For the last year or so yes. To be honest, It bloody sucks to say it, but I'm struggling with the bluriness of the image and I always scoffed at PC gamers for saying the same thing. The thing is I can see it's a technical marvel underneath, but the lower res and FXAA (which tends to blur the overall image as well) makes it hard to appreciate.

Imagine this game at 1080p, with better AA (and 60fps to boot), it would be stunning.

 

[KageMaru]

Explosions look awful full stop. Not only do grenades do jack shit. They have no oomph whatsoever. They're like firecrackers.

While I agree the ship explosions are lacking, I wouldn't call the explosions awful in general. They scales down the alpha effects a little. Seeing how that was the main cause of the performance issues in reach, it was a good call IMO.

People can go on and on about so called "trade offs" all they want, the result is one of the best looking games this gen. Its funny so many give props to H3 and Reach now all of a sudden they're being held as such grand technical marvels. When they launched they were getting shit on left and right graphics and gameplay wise(H3 especially) now they supposedly look better than 4? Give me a break.

They do have a point with some of their comments regarding halo 3 and Reach. Halo 4 does make trade offs, but the same can be said about Halo 3 and Reach as well. I wouldn't necessarily take the term in a negative way.